'Big Hero 6' Further Merges Disney With Marvel

Since the Disney-Marvel Union began, people have wondered if Disney was going to make their own adaptation of a Marvel property. Turns out, "their own adaptation" is rather different to the original.

After Disney bought Marvel, bringing the Avengers in-house, it didn't take long before producers started going through Marvel's extensive library of comic books in search of a property to develop into an animated adventure. 'Big Hero 6' is the first Disney-Marvel animation project. Although critics have wondered just how much Marvel is left in the movie.

Hiro and Baymax were redesigned to be more 'Disney friendly'

First published in 1998, 'Big Hero 6' was created by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau in their spare time while they worked on another project. It's about a group of politicians and business owners who recruit and train a team of agents with superhuman powers for the Japanese government.

Anyone who has seen the movie will immediately recognise that this is not the film's plot. Relocated to a Japanese-flavoured America, the movie features a group of young computer nerds who create the technology they need to take on a marauding villain, in the process becoming a team of six heroes. The most fundamental difference is the central character Hiro, who in the comic book is 13 when he creates the scaly green Baymax himself using downloaded memories from his father. In the film Baymax is a cuddly pillow-shaped robot created by the dead brother of the 15-year-old Hiro.

In other words, Disney merely took the title and character names and then created a Disney movie that bears little resemblance to the relatively unknown original Marvel comics. On the plus side, this means that the books retain their integrity for fans who have yet to discover them. On the other hand, it means we'll probably never see an actual 'Big Hero 6' movie. But Disney is so adept at making entertaining movies that no one is likely to complain.